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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813519">Metamorphoses</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanderavery998/pseuds/alexanderavery998'>alexanderavery998</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little bit of angst, A little bit of fluff, Canon Compliant, F/F, Healing, Implied Sexual Content, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Murder Wives, Season 3, Women in Love, what-ifs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:01:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,587</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813519</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanderavery998/pseuds/alexanderavery998</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana contemplates just how much she’s changed, and wonders if Margot would have liked any of her past selves.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alana Bloom/Margot Verger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Metamorphoses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><i>I cross-post here (AO3), Wattpad, and FFN as</i> @alexanderavery998. <i>If you find my fics anywhere else, please let me know, because that means they have been reposted without my permission.</i></p><p>I hope you all enjoy this little Murder Wives vignette! Please feel free to leave comments, as they make my day. :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. </em>
</p><p>Everything changes, nothing perishes.</p><p>— Ovid, <em> Metamorphoses</em>, Book XV, line 165</p><p> </p><p>Alana studied the smooth, white ceiling of Margot’s cavernous bedroom as her breathing evened out. Her post-coital high should have been enough to stop her from overthinking, at least for a moment, but she was not so lucky. Or maybe that was luck in and of itself — maybe, if she had let herself overthink a little more about Hannibal, it would have been enough to spook her away from a relationship with him in the same way that she had shied away from Will. While she had recovered in the hospital, she had dwelled obsessively over what could’ve been if she had been less blind, but it was too late for that. She had to move forward. She just didn’t know if this was <em> moving forward</em>, or if she was trapping herself with the same personal failings. Maybe that was what spawned her question to Margot, studying the ceiling so that she didn’t have to meet her lover’s inquisitive eyes:</p><p>“Would you have liked me before, do you think?”</p><p>Margot turned over to face her. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”</p><p>Margot’s tone held a touch of amusement, but beyond that, there was always something so soothing about her voice, slow and sultry even when talking about the most mundane of things, that Alana could feel herself relax.</p><p>“Before I was defenestrated.” Just thinking about it drew her attention to the ache in her hips, and Alana settled deeper into the silk sheets, unsure whether what she was experiencing was phantom or real pain. Maybe it didn’t matter which it was. “My life feels fundamentally fractured: before I hit the concrete and after. I look at who I was before, and I don’t even recognize her. I was so sure of myself and my place in the world. I knew my purpose was to help people through their problems in the ways I wished I could help myself, and I thought I could do it. I thought I could save Will. I thought I could save Abigail. But in the end, I couldn’t even save myself.”</p><p>Alana turned to face Margot. The late afternoon sunlight filtering through the westward-facing window illuminated her like an avenging angel, smoothing out the premature creases from a lifetime of worry and igniting her eyes like emeralds set in painted porcelain.</p><p>“Sounds noble, if not worryingly naïve and disconnected from reality.”</p><p>“Glowing praise,” Alana said dryly, and Margot’s lips quirked up in a smile. Alana responded in kind, but the smile fell from her face as quickly as it appeared.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Margot said after a beat, bringing them back to Alana’s question. “Tell me more about who you were.”</p><p>So she did. She told Margot about how she grew up with three brothers, two older and one younger, and an older sister. She told her about desiring more parental attention than her parents could give five children, and how her younger brother had been so resentful of this lack of parental attention that he went off the rails and was still lost in the weeds. She told her about how she had struggled with overthinking and overanalyzing from a very young age, and how being stuck in her own head led her to want to help other people escape theirs. She told her about how she felt responsible for the people around her, somehow, as if they could live better lives if she just worked a little harder to help them. She told her about her savior complex and perfectionism. She told her about her confident, borderline-arrogant belief in the sharp lines between good and evil. And through it all, she felt no judgement from Margot.</p><p>Once Alana started, she didn’t know if she could stop. She told Margot about her education at John Hopkins, her mentorship under the charming Hannibal Lecter, and the growth of her career even as she struggled with her romantic and personal life. She talked about her ill-fated attraction to Will, his mental deterioration and hospitalization, and how she struggled with the idea that he could be a serial killer. She faltered in discussing her vehement insistence that Hannibal was innocent of the atrocities of which he was accused, but did not stop. Silent tears rolled down her face when verbalizing the crushing double loss of Abigail, the girl who was dead and alive and dead again. And in the end, when she ran out of words to say, Margot was still rapt, paying attention to Alana and Alana alone. Gratitude and warmth pooled in Alana’s belly. She lay there with Margot in quiet contemplation after, soaking up the drifting afternoon sun.</p><p>“Would you have liked me then?” Alana asked again after a while.</p><p>Margot shrugged one shoulder in her peripheral. “Who knows, maybe I would have. But you know that doesn’t matter to me, right?” When Alana stayed silent, Margot said sharply, “Alana, look at me.” Alana met Margot’s eyes and was taken aback by the sheer intensity behind them. “I don’t care who you were then, because it isn’t who you are now.”</p><p>“Margot—”</p><p>“No, don’t. Just think about it. Would you have liked me before all of this? Or would you have seen me only as a broken woman with a delusional worldview?”</p><p>“Some might say the latter sentiment describes both of us now,” Alana said wryly.</p><p>“That doesn’t answer my question.” The words were harsh, but Margot’s voice was gentle.</p><p>Alana let out a quiet breath. “I would have been much more against your intention to get rid of your brother. I would’ve told you that there were other, much healthier ways to work through your trauma, and that violence was not the answer.”</p><p>“And now?”</p><p>“I understand your desire for revenge. A world without monsters like Mason or Hannibal in it is better than one with.”</p><p>She spoke truthfully, but Margot scrutinized her in a way eerily similar to how Alana used to scrutinize her patients when she found their statements lacking. Then: “You’re worried that makes you a bad person.”</p><p>“Not bad,” Alana corrected, feeling embarrassingly exposed. “But not good, either. Not who I used to think I was.”</p><p>“Do you think of me that way? As a bad person?”</p><p>“No. I don’t.”</p><p>“Then how do you think of me?”</p><p>“I think of you as a strong woman who’s been broken countless times and yet puts her pieces back together because she refuses to be destroyed. I think of resilience and hard-won survival. I think of instincts borne of necessity, and of your maternal instincts, and of your desire for genuine connection, even though you tell yourself you don’t need anybody but you.”</p><p>“Some might say those sentiments describe both of us,” Margot said softly. She reached out and brushed a few stray hairs from Alana’s face, sweeping them behind her ear and away from her forehead, and then carded her fingers through the soft, dark locks. “Do you want to know how I see you?”</p><p>Alana closed her eyes and hummed, half as a go-ahead signal and half as a noise of pleasure as Margot stroked her hair.</p><p>“I see you as a kind, strong, beautiful, resilient woman who is broken because she gave too many of her pieces away to other people. It’s okay to prioritize yourself sometimes, Alana. That doesn’t make you a bad person, however arbitrary the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ may be.”</p><p>“But I want Hannibal to suffer,” Alana whispered, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “I want that bastard to suffer for what he did to me, and Will, and Abigail, and Beverly, and everyone else whose lives he’s ruined. I’ve never actively wanted another human being to suffer before. Are you saying that doesn’t make me bad?”</p><p>Margot cupped her face. “If you don’t think I’m ‘bad’ for seeking revenge against my brother, why would you be ‘bad’ for desiring revenge for yourself?”</p><p>A tear slipped from Alana’s closed eyelid down her cheek. She felt as though she was back in confession as a teenager, trying to atone for sins that she wasn’t even sure if she’d made, but seeking forgiveness for them anyway. “Sometimes...sometimes I don’t like who I am now, and other times, I don’t think I’ve ever liked who I am. Would...would you still like me if I changed again? If I was no longer the Alana who lays here now?”</p><p>“We all morph and change,” Margot said softly. “What I care about is the Alana in front of me, right now, in the present moment. Nothing else matters. Those other versions of you don’t exist. They are long gone, or have yet to arrive. What I care about is the tangible.” Margot wiped away the trail of Alana’s tear with her thumb. “I care about <em> you</em>. I like <em> you</em>. There is no use dwelling on what could have been. Trust me, I’ve tried it. All we have is the moment. And in this moment... well...” Margot swallowed. “I love you.”</p><p>Alana opened her eyes, letting her tears fall freely now, and placed her hand over Margot’s where it still cupped her face. Margot’s eyes were uncharacteristically wet when they met hers.</p><p>“I love you, too.” Alana leaned in and touched their foreheads together, noses brushing and lips lingering over lips. “To change, wherever that takes us.”</p><p>“To change,” Margot echoed. Then she kissed her, and for once, Alana did not overthink it.</p>
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